1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a method for a vehicle dispatching system to provide dispatching communications between vehicles and a control center for dispatching the nearest available vehicle to meet customer service requirements at minimum costs.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Conventional vehicle fleet dispatching and taxi calling have many problems. Take taxi calling for instance, when a control center receives a customer call for taxi services, the control center usually broadcasts through a radio transceiver system to all taxis regard customer call information. Taxi drivers who are interested utilize the same radio transceiver system to respond vehicle conditions and desires to take the mission. The control center receives the responses and makes dispatching decision. As the control center has to transmit broadcast messages to the fleet constantly, the vehicles also are filled with broadcast noises constantly. Moreover, vehicle conditions and distances to customers are reported by vehicle owners, information accuracy is not objective. Vehicle owners who want to get business may feed the control center with a doctored distance to the calling customer to swindle the business unfairly.
Another conventional approach is to have every vehicle of the fleet to employ an information communication system to automatically report vehicle location to the control center. The control center can constantly monitor all vehicle locations of the fleet. When there is a dispatch mission, the control center can issue dispatch order readily based on the information. However this system requires every vehicle to report its location constantly, communication costs are high. It is not economically justified.
In view of aforesaid disadvantages, the invention aims to provide a method for a vehicle dispatching system that has a control center to control dispatch communication for at least one vehicle. According to the invention, every vehicle is equipped with a car phone. The control center includes a control computer and a data transmission device. The car phone includes a broadcast receiver, a data transceiver, a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver and a distance counter. The method of the invention include the processes of: the control center receives a call requesting for vehicle such as a customer asking for taxi services; the computer in the control center calculates longitude and latitude coordinates of customer location based on customer input and through electronic maps, then emits service request commands through a broadcast system; car phones in vehicles receive the service request commands and compare with the longitude and latitude coordinates of the vehicle received from the GPS receiver, and calculate the distances between the vehicles and the customer; different distances determine return call delay of information transmission from the vehicles to the control center; the vehicle which is nearest to the customer has a higher possibility of calling back and communicating successfully first while vehicles located at longer distances have higher possibility of calling back later and not able to access the occupied communication links; when the control center accepts the first return call, it lifts the original mission commands and orders call back cancellations for those car phones that are located at longer distances and do not respond, and those car phones having tried to call back but are delayed due to line busy are revoked and treated as invalid call; hence the vehicle at the nearest distance is dispatched at minimum communication costs to resolve the dispatching problems incurred to conventional vehicle dispatching systems.
The primary object of the invention is to provide a method for a vehicle dispatching system for dispatching a nearest available vehicle to meet customer""s service requirements at minimum communication costs.
The foregoing, as well as additional objects, features and advantages of the invention will be more readily apparent from the following detailed description, which proceeds with reference to the accompanying drawings.